American Curriculum vs GCSEs

[TeensMom]

I recently posted about sidestepping GCSEs for a highly anxious, but high achieving, DD.

Apparently Latymer Upper School are now doing this, but only from 2027.

www.latymer-upper.org/middle-school-curriculum-reform-2027/

We’re thinking about switching to an American curriculum school in SW London or Surrey. Can anyone with recent experience comment on the depth and breadth of the American curriculum compared with GCSEs?

The main reason to switch would be to continue studying a broader range of subjects for longer, eg History, Geography and RS, Music, Drama and Art, rather than just one from each group.

However, if the American curriculum is a year behind the UK KS4 curriculum and “shallower”, DD will just be going over work she’s already covered, so she won’t benefit from the switch.

The SAT is meant to be a general aptitude test, not a test of learning achievement and doesn’t even try to test the upper levels. It would be a bit like taking the lower level maths available in the uk - for anyone in the upper end of achievement in the US it is also very very easy in terms of content. Timing pressure makes it slightly more challenging, but most us students will have been taught all of the required content by end of middle years or the very beginning of high school well in advance of when the test is commonly taken.

SAT 2s aren’t really done anymore, and even when I was in high school 20 years ago had already fallen out of favour vs. The AP exams. They might have still been in play much longer for international students who wouldn’t have access to AP curriculum courses, and maybe some US schools hadn’t adopted the AP curriculum across all courses. AP comes with more of a defined curriculum (similar to GCSEs or a-levels, but usually only 1 year of content) and are meant to be more rigorous, though they can be taken throughout high school so not necessarily reflective of final achievement. I think sat2 was an attempt to allow students to differentiate to some degree at the higher end (since regular SATs don’t test more advanced curriculum), but I don’t remember if being attached to a curriculum in the same way AP is and probably walked this middle ground of being more advanced than SATs but less advanced than what one would do as a high achiever in your senior year.

Did your DC take the SAT IIs in Year 13?

University in the US is typically 4 years versus 3 years in the UK. Part of the reason for this is that the material covered in A Levels is roughly equivalent to freshman courses at US colleges. In the UK, all university applicants are expected to prepare for A Levels. In the US, only some students do AP courses and exams (roughly equivalent to A Levels or AS Levels, depending on the subject), before applying to university (I believe the median college applicant in the US takes only one AP exam), and then typically in their senior (last) year.

So, if your DC sat, for example, a Math SAT II exam in the autumn of Year 13, they would have covered nearly all of a typical freshman math syllabus by that point whereas most US students taking the exam would still be finishing up the equivalent of the GCSE syllabus and even the ones taking Calculus AB or BC in their senior years would have just started the course. Only the relative few who took the Math APs before their senior year would have been on an even footing with your DC.

That said, good students at very good US high schools (see my earlier post) will be taking AP classes starting well before their senior years.

Thank you for explaining! DS did all SATs in Year 12 as I didn't know what to expect and we were considering US but ideally Germany for uni so he had other things to do. Both SATII Maths Level
1 and Level 2 were taken in winter of Year 12 as far as I remember.

Got your point about the structure, but DS also did SAT II Spanish which he only studied to GCSE here and Literature which was a massive struggle even at GCSE because of his dyspraxia and inability to write at speed. He didn't have any extra time at SAT. Achieved 760+ in both...

We really liked the idea of Liberal Arts as education in the UK is too narrow too soon imo, and DS was interested in both STEM and languages (and good at them) but had to drop MFLs too early because of timetabling at his schools.

You could consider Sevenoaks?

www.sevenoaksschool.org/academic/our-curriculum/overview/

Sevenoaks does IB in Years 12-13, but in Years 10-11 it’s still the usual GCSEs, plus a critical thinking course and some extracurricular activities.

It's not really relevant for the thread, but I don't think it's correct to say that university courses in the US are 4 years long because of our lack of the structure of our highschools.

I expect that courses last for four years because of the structure of our university courses, which tend to have much more diverse requirements than those in the UK. While university courses in the UK are very narrow (only allowing for small numbers of modules outside your department), university students in the US are required to have credits from many different disciplines. It simply takes longer for most students to complete the requirements. That being said, US university courses are also far less rigidly structured. Many students to complete the course within three years and save themselves the money of completing the fourth year.

As for SATs, they are not the end-all-be-all of university admissions in the US. They are sort of your minimum entry point. You need to do well in them in order to make the shortlist, but entry decisions take into consideration your cover letter, references, extra-curricular activities, and - probably most importantly - your GPA and marks in specific subjects. So the SAT doesn't need to be excessively hard, and it's not intended to reflect your cumulative understanding of advanced material.